125 Years Ago 1898
From The East Hampton Star, December 9
Pathmaster Dayton succeeded, on Tuesday last, in opening up the Sag Harbor road, which had been blockaded since the big snow storm. The low place under the railroad bridge is still in an impassable condition and Mr. Dayton has cut out that section of the highway by means of fences erected across it on either side of the bridge, and a roadway has been leased through the property of Charles Dayton. We understand the commissioners’ attorney is conferring with the railroad company with a view to having this bad place in the highway put in proper shape.
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The Star is thirteen years old to-day, and it is Friday, too.
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The freight business done at the East Hampton Station exceeds in amount that of any winter since the road was built. The receipts for the past month were over $1,800. Two freight trains are running each day to accommodate the increased business. The sudden growth at this end of the road in this line of the railroad’s business is owing to the large amount of building in East Hampton.
100 Years Ago 1923
From The East Hampton Star, December 7
The Masonic Club of East Hampton is planning to give another rummage sale in the lobby of its new building on Main street. The date set is Saturday, December 15th, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Last year the club’s sale, just before Christmas, proved very popular and was well patronized by the residents of the village. This year the committee is planning several new features and attractions, more of which will be announced in the next issue of the Star.
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Samuel Field of this village has recently received the appointment of rural mail carrier from the post office department. The position pays a salary of $1,095 per year.
Mr. Field’s appointment is to fill the unexpired term which ends June 30, 1925. There were two other applicants.
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About next Monday or Tuesday there are several thrifty persons about town who are going to receive their Christmas Club checks from the East Hampton National Bank.
This popular method of systematic saving grows each year, until this year Cashier Geo. A. Miller announces that the total amount that will be mailed to club members is over $8,000, quite a little more than last year.
75 Years Ago 1948
From The East Hampton Star, December 9
An estimated crowd of three hundred attended the special meeting of the Board of Education on Tuesday evening, and the high spot of the meeting came when principal Leon Q. Brooks, who has been school principal here since 1928, told his listeners that he had no intention of resigning and that his critics could take it or leave it. The principal spoke in a confident, aggressive tone and at considerable length.
All this was apropos of a question asked by Mrs. Daniel Tucker whether the principal is eligible for a pension, if he retires at the end of the present school year.
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County Clerk R. Ford Hughes is again arranging with East Hampton town officials to establish a temporary Motor Vehicle Bureau office here in East Hampton for the issuance of the 1949 license tabs and registrations, on December 10 and 17. These licenses will be sold between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on the above dates at the Town Office, Post Office Building.
Supervisor H.L. Mulford Jr. was pleased with the results last year when many residents of the town availed themselves of this special service.
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A very well attended meeting of the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society was held at the home of Mrs. Hamilton King on Monday, Mrs. A. Victor Amann presiding.
Work on the Village Green was reported by Mrs. B.G. Chapman. Drainage is being improved by lowering the surface of the Green; the last time this was done was 1933. Since then the surface has risen nine inches. It is expected that the Green will look as well as usual by next summer.
50 Years Ago 1973
From The East Hampton Star, December 6
A celebration, a carpool, plans for a new administration, and several elections of their own have occupied the East Hampton Democrats since the town election last month, when three of their seven candidates defeated Republican incumbents for the posts of Supervisor, Councilman, and Highway Superintendent. The three, Judith Hope, Eamon McDonough, and John Bistrian, will take office on Jan. 1.
They were feted last Wednesday evening at Chez Labbat, reportedly “well into the early hours.” The town Democratic Club provided beer, hors d’oeuvres, and music by a group called “The Generation Gap.” The “Victory Bash,” as the event was called, attracted an estimated 300 celebrants.
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Bizarre things in the sky have again mystified people on Main Beach, East Hampton, it was reported last week. They were described as a bright light hovering over the horizon and three little lights rushing at it from the west, flying around it, and then speeding off to chase a jet. At least five people were said to have seen them between about 6:30 and 7, the evening of Nov. 20.
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Montauk residents appear to be responding enthusiastically to a drive, sparked by the Montauk Chamber of Commerce, for a medical center.
Mrs. Lucille Jarmain, president of the Chamber, said Tuesday that the New York Telephone Company had “practically promised” that its vacant one-story brick operations building on Main Street in the business district would be sold for use as a medical center.
The asking price, according to Mrs. Jarmain, is $30,000 cash. It is estimated that renovations of the building, whose area is reportedly between 2,700 and 3,000 square feet, will cost about $10,000.
25 Years Ago 1998
From The East Hampton Star, December 10
To a regular observer of East Hampton Town Board hearings, Friday’s meeting seemed unusual — the main courtroom was fairly rumbling from the murmuring of a room full of young men in plaid shirts and all-terrain footwear.
“What’s going on?” an observer asked a reporter. “Rugby guys,” he replied.
But the real answer wasn’t that simple.
Most of the crowd was there to state its opposition to a proposed local ordinance that would limit certain uses on privately owned farmland 10 acres or more in size.
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One of the perks of working on a Coast Guard buoy tender is a nearly continuous supply of mussels. They come aboard attached to buoy chains.
Doug Cooper, commanding officer of the tender Ida Lewis, recalled some especially large and beautiful chain-dwellers raised from Nantucket waters late last month, but agreed with a crewman shoveling bushels of them overboard off Three Mile Harbor not long ago: They see too many.
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In a double-barreled announcement they hope will help restore a modicum of public confidence, Southampton Hospital officials said Monday that an independent survey last week of the hospital’s medical care and physical plant earned high marks, and that an earlier estimate of its 1997 financial losses was nearly on target, according to a long-awaited audit board members received Friday certified by K.P.M.G. Peat Marwick, the board’s auditors.
